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Help for soldiers

Military veterans have earned benefits, but not all know about them

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Saturday December 8, 2012 5:05 AM

Efforts to make more military veterans aware of the benefits available to them are right on the
money: Men and women who have served this country deserve all the help the country can give them to
find jobs, stay healthy and build their lives after service.

But many don’t know what they’re entitled to, much less how to claim it.

As veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan struggle with higher-than-average rates of
unemployment, mental illness and other challenges, many are doing so without help that could be
life-saving.

Benefits include the VA medical system, lifetime payments for service-related disabilities and
help with education, life insurance and home loans.

Although veterans of the most-recent conflicts — those after 9/11 — are better informed than
their predecessors, even among that group 40 percent said in Department of Veterans Affairs surveys
that they have “little or no” understanding of their benefits. Among all veterans, the number is
more than half.

One hopes that will change, now that a new law requires all service members being discharged to
attend a series of detailed presentations about benefits available to them. Until now, such
sessions were optional, and the number who attended them varied greatly by branch of service. VA
officials hope the change will more than double the number of new vets they reach each year, from
150,000 to 307,000.

Earlier studies already have confirmed what many veterans know: Dealing with the VA is no
picnic. Trying to claim the education benefit to go to college, for example, can be a long and
frustrating process, depending on how much help the college gives in navigating the bureaucracy.
This year, Ohio State, commendably, beefed up its department dedicated to helping veterans use
their GI-bill benefits.

That’s great for Ohio State students, but it illustrates how the level of awareness of benefits
can vary widely from state to state. Even the amount of disability payments awarded varies
depending on where a veteran lives. That’s not right.

A stronger effort to educate soon-to-be veterans before they leave the military behind might
ease those disparities.

Especially galling is the fact that, according to VA data, more than a fourth of Iraq and
Afghanistan veterans don’t have health insurance and aren’t enrolled in the VA system, even though
they’re eligible to participate for five years after combat operations. This, among a population
that suffers disproportionately from post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and
other health issues that demand special care.

This has prompted Rep. Bill Owens, D-N.Y., to introduce a bill that automatically would enroll
new veterans in the VA, rather than requiring them to seek it out.

It’s an appropriate step to make sure the nation pays its debt, as much as is possible, to those
who have served and sacrificed.